Aha, greetings, fair Tuesday. What’s that you say? Yeah, I saw Monday yesterday. She was still dragging from the weekend, and was acting a right bitch. I’m thinking about calling Wednesday today and see if he wants to hang out with Friday and I; it’s always a good time when Friday’s there. Alright man, take it easy – say “what’s up” to Thursday if you see his sorry ass before I do.
Let’s get started.
Somewhat related to yesterday’s rant, and the last I’ll talk about it, I think, I stumbled on the full draft text of the Fed’s 700 billion dollar bailout plan online (I’d missed this before, or I’d have linked it yesterday). In the article I was reading that linked to the text, the author stressed the following language from Section 8:
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.
Holy crap what? So… the details of this $700,000,000,000 expenditure will be done behind closed-doors, the taxpayers will get no accounting of how the deal goes down, and no single entity on earth can review, question, challenge, or even see the details of the bailout. A $700,000,000,000 “blank check.” No one has to say how the money was used, no one has to account for the money achieving the intended purpose, heck no one can even inquire about what that exact purpose actually is beyond generality.
Your money: No longer your business. Our tax dollars just got Patriot Acted.
Late-breaking edit: Found this article just before midnight. It will apparently run in tomorrow’s (today, as you read) Wall Street Journal. Seems the Treasury has decided, under pressure, that they will indeed have to allow some oversight into the whole process. Man, and I just wrote all that…
Now, before leaving the topic, I wanted to pass along just a few more pieces of required reading for those who are interested in learning more about the bailout. You can skip the next paragraph if you hate this stuff.
Slate’s finance-centric site has a good article called, Henry Paulson, Socialist, which does a much better job saying some of the things I was attempting to sputter here yesterday. The NY Times has an interesting piece about how lobbyists (sorry Kristi, like you need more bad press) are already preparing to ask for additional aide on top of the $700B plan. Fantastic. And, for those looking to “send a letter” or “make a call” to ease their conscience in lieu of taking pitchforks and torches to the Lawn, check out the all-senators one-click e-mail link over at Mish’s site. You can do it all in one feel swoop and use their pre-written text (if you’d like) or write your own.
OK enough; moving on…
The second day of this fair week brings a deepening sickness unto our little Keaton, who is new beset with a wet, hacking cough and faucet of a nose. When she gets sick, the wheezing thing we dealt with a ways back tends to plague her again, so Sharaun busted out her nebulizer and gave her a “treatment.” It still breaks my heart to see her wearing that noisy thing. It really does seem to help her tho (I guess a steroid to the lungs would, however), so I’m not 100% against it I suppose. Anyway, we’re hoping her wellness returns soon, as no one’s down with a sick baby.
And, randomly…
Fishing for a deal, I called our internet provider the other day and told them I was considering switching to a new faster and cheaper provider, hoping they’d offer me some faster and cheaper deal to stick with them. Luck was with me, and they ended up bumping up me to the 6 MB up / 760 Kbps down package for $17 less per month than I had been paying. Today the workerman came to hook up the new “filter” at the house and grant us our new speeds. And, after running a speed test tonight – I think he may have messed up. I’m getting unnatural speeds, testing consistently around 15-20MB down and 1.5 MB down. I didn’t even know this connection was capable of those speeds. I know they probably haven’t yet turned on some filter back at ISP-central, or haven’t re-provisioned my modem or something… but I don’t want the speed to end. Bummer.
That’s it folks, goodnight and until tomorrow – Dave luh da kids.
Also written on this day...
- happening - 2021
- couple months in pictures - 2010
- my junk is 100% - 2009
- a bigger desk this time - 2004
- dinosaurs roaming the earth - 2003